Hoops Tonight - Jokic & Nuggets edge out Clippers, Pacers-76ers + Draymond & Warriors in trouble?

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Happy one day, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. I've got another jam pack show for you guys. Today. We're going to be breaking down

a couple of games from the n season tournaments. Late last night, the Clippers and Nuggets played a highly entertaining game, the Clippers trying to get out of this long losing streak, and they had a seven point lead about halfway through the fourth quarter, and then the Nuggets just started spamming Jokic post ups as they came out with the win. There lots of interesting stuff to get into from both teams in that game. And then the Indiana Pacers went

into Philly and handled business beating the Sixers. Tyreus Haliburton was incredible fifteen assist, zero turnovers, really picked them apart and pick and roll in the fourth quarter. We're going to talk about that game from the per perspective of both teams, and then we're going to do a deep dive into the Indiana Pacers, a team that is now sitting at seven and four, which is the seventh best

record in the NBA at this point. We're going to just talk about how Tyrese has been so successful, a couple of key contributors talk about their big picture numbers so far this season. Just a classic deep dive like we've been doing on teams that we've seen earlier. Then at the end of the show, we're gonna play a

game of fake questions, real answers. I've got three fake questions for you guys, this time a couple of them to allow me to briefly touch on the Lakers and Warriors games from last night, and then the third one, Draymond Green put Rudy Gobert in headlock last night, which is objectively funny given the way I've been defending Draymond as of late. So we're obviously going to talk about that for a couple of minutes as well. You guys, oree the drill before we get started. Subscribe to our

brand new YouTube channel. It would mean a lot to me as we try to get this channel off the ground if you guys would scroll down and hit that subscribe button. Don't forget about our podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast under Hoops tonight, follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason ltus. You guys, don't miss any show announcements as well as the video breakdowns that I do. I posted a ton of clips, particularly of Tyrese Haliburton today on my Twitter feed. You're gonna want to follow

me there to see that stuff. And then, last, but not least, we need mail bag questions for later in the week, so keep dropping those in the YouTube comments so we can hit them later. On. All right, let's

talk some basketball. So this Clippers Nuggets game was a really interesting example of two incredibly different basketball teams giving each other problems for different reasons, right, because the Clippers had an extended run in this game, from about two minutes to go in the second quarter to that Kawhi jumper over Christian Brown in the fourth quarter that put the Clippers up by seven. They outscored the Nuggets fifty eight to thirty eight, so an extended stretch of them

playing some pretty dominant basketball. And one of the main reasons why is on the offensive end, they are actually capable of giving this Nuggets defense, which is a good defense, They're actually capable of giving them some issues. We've talked a lot about this on the show, like how would you cause problems for this Nuggets defense? Because this is not a team that has like five top tier defenders

out there that's flying around making plays. This is not the Minnesota Timberwolves, right, Like, there are points in this team where you have advantages where you can attack. They are just incredibly well coached. They have a scheme that works for them. All of their guys are bought in, and they have a handful of guys that are great defensive players. Kntavis Pope is a great point of attack defender, Aaron Gordon is an incredibly versatile defender. Michael Porter Junior

is good and help and recover situations. Right, So they've got guys that are capable, and then the rest of the guys are all just really bought in and they do their jobs. But one of the things that the Clippers can do, and have been doing for years now, is they get you out of your base scheme by spacing you out with high level ball handling and then

picking you apart from there. And they've done damage over the years to great defensive teams, famously just picking apart the Utah Jazz without Kawhi Leonard by spacing them out and driving and kicking them to death, right, and so again, when it comes to this particular Nuggets team, if there was a way to score against them, it would be the way the Clippers did for the most part during

that game last night. I know, you see, oh, they only scored one hundred and eight points, but you got to remember this was a slower pace game, and the Clippers actually scored about one hundred and fourteen points per one hundred possessions at that pace during this game, which is a hefty six points per one hundred possessions, more than the Denver Nuggets have been allowing over the course of the previous games that they had played this season.

So they were having success in that regard and obviously it showed on the scoreboard when they took that lead. How did they do it by pulling Yokic up to the level of the screen, right, And now Denver has in recent months, basically dating back to the playoffs, been kind of oscillating back and forth between bringing Jokic up to the level versus kind of having him sit back.

There was a brief stretch in the fourth quarter, I think it might have been in the third quarter where they did actually drop Yolkic back quite a bit and try to bait them into attacking him at the rim. And James Harden had one bucket on him where he kind of elbowed him in the chest on a play like that, and he had another another similar play where Yokic actually bothered him at the rim. But they had some success in this game by pulling Yokic out to

the level of the screen. From there, it's that passed to the middle of the floor many times. In this particular game, it was Terrence Man that was operating there. But then on the backside you have incredibly skilled players, right, Like there's a play where it's PG on the left wing and Kawhi in the left corner, and there you know, Terrence Man that makes the catch and makes that kickout pass to Kawai in the corner, and now Kauwhi is attacking with an advantage, and it like missing a little

floater on this play. There's another one where it's like Kawhi on the left wing and it's Russell Westbrook in the corner, and Russell Westbrook cuts out of the back weekside corner and dunks it with two hands, right like when they were pulling that second defender up to the level of the screen. In this case, Jokic, they're playing four on three on the backside with really really skilled players, right and they were basically at the level on Harden

for the most part. There were some stretches where they went a deeper drop on Harden, but then they were up at the level on PG most of the game. Pg's just been unbelievable as a pull up shooter as of late, and then Kawhi Leonard as well. They were kind of showing high and then from there down the stretch of the game, there's a lot of classic matchup attacking stuff right like PG face up on contains Callbo Pop, who's an excellent perimeter defender, but he's given three inches

to Paul Georgie. He's a little bit shorter, right, So PG just like hard jab step, elevates over the top,

knocks the shot down. You know, Christian Brown, there's a really nice defensive possession on Kawhi or he traps him there in the middle of the floor that this is the bucket that put the Clippers up ninety nine ninety two, and it's it just doesn't matter because quite so much dam bigger than him, he could just shoot over the top, right, It's it's James Harden getting Zeke Naugy on a switch and just toasting him with that classic you know, series

of between the legs crossovers until it just explodes to the left and gets all the way to the rim for a layup like that is kind of like the idealized version of the Clippers and what they're capable of and that's kind of been a similar problem that they've caused for teams forever you want to run your traditional coverages, they're just not going to work against us because we can hunt, you know, individual matchups, because we've got size all over the floor on the perimeter, and then in

pick and roll, like we just have our pull up shooting is so good and our playmaking is so good that you're just going to be in a position where you're kind of compromised on the backside, right, And so they did have some success against Denver's defense doing that, But the big question is can you do that to Denver space them out, cause problems for their defense while also having enough size on the floor to hang with Denver size. And the answer is not this Clippers team

at least. And you know, I've looked at teams out there over the years that or over the last year since Denver's kind of made this a cent as teams that could potentially do this, Like, you know, I'd like to see a better version of the Lakers take a crack at the Nuggets where ad doesn't just get completely demolished and they get some higher level perimeter play. Maybe

after a D'Angelo Russell trade. Right, I'd love to see the Milwaukee Bucks have a chance to see Giannis and brook Lopez battle against those guys while having the firepower that Dame brings to the table. Right, Like Boston is another team that's kind of got similar attributes to the Clippers and the sense that they can really space you out and they've got a lot of different guys that

can attack matchups. But I am yet to see a team that can do both, that can space out Denver on one end and cause their defense problems while also holding up physically under the Denver interior. Onslaught on the other end of the floor, because at the end of the game, when it was ninety nine ninety two, when Kawhi makes that little jumper to put them up seven, the Nuggets just said, screw all the bullshit, We're just posting up Nikola Jokic every single time down the floor.

There was one random possession after after Kawhi made the shot where they just played terrible transition defense and Christian Brown threw that lob to Michael Porter Junior, who dunked it with his left hand to make it ninety nine ninety four. But after that it was literally a Jokic

post up on every single possession. The only one that wasn't was the Reggie Jackson layup, which was literally on a play where they were trying to post Nikola jokicch up and while they were kind of navigating all the screens over there, Reggie Jackson noticed that all the help defenders were occupied and just tried to beat his defender to the left hand side and get all the way to the rim. So like they didn't mess around, They knew what their advantage was, and they just completely spammed

that down the stretch of the game. So what I want to do to kind of like demonstrate this is kind of go over possession by possession with the kinds of shots that the Clippers were getting versus the kinds of shots that the Nuggets were getting. And then you tell me whether or not you think if we played that same game ten times in a row, which team would win, because I think this is an interesting exercise

and shot quality. Because the important context here is Tylu does not trust any of the centers on his roster. Obviously Plumb he's heard at this point, but he will not play Zoo back at the end of games He's played in just six of the twenty three clutch minutes that the Clippers have played this year, and if you were gonna play him, it'd be in this particular matchup against Jokic, and they didn't do so. Like, for whatever reason, Tylu just when push comes to shove, he feels more

comfortable going small. And that's going to be unless they have an upgrade for Zubac, which I don't think they're gonna find this season. I mean, maybe they do. Daniel Tye just got to buy out from the Pacers and he's gonna come over and maybe he gets some of those clutch minutes, but like, I have a hard time believing that he's gonna trust Daniel Tys in those moments. Right, I think it's probably gonna be PJ. Tucker playing center a lot, you know what I mean, or or they

ended up getting rid of PJ. Tucker down the very end of this game. But I'm not sure that that that's going to be a problem that goes away for the Clippers. Right, It's going to be these small lineups in crunch time, so you have huge mismatches for Jokich against every Clipper on the floor, and that kind of is the crux of the issue here. So we're gonna start with again it was ninety nine to ninety two, and then we get the bad transition defense possession that

leads to the Michael Porter junior dunk. From there, these are all of the Denver offensive possessions down the stretch of the game. There was a simple dribble handoff between Reggie Jackson and Yokic that got Paul George switched onto Yokic. He posted right in the middle of the floor, hit him with a hard right hand dribble spinning over his right shoulder for a short jump shot in the lane. Super high percentage shot. He's gonna make that seventy percent

of the time, especially against that type of matchup. He makes it very next possession, they run another kind of ball screen on the left side of the floor to get PJ. Tucker off of Jokic again. Like, one of the things I like about the Nuggets is like they this is an incredibly well coached team and they take execution very seriously. So for instance, like Yokic can score on PJ. Tucker, but hey, we got twenty four seconds, let's get him onto a smaller defender. That's less of

a fire hydrant, right. And they were really deliberate about just like when they got down the floor, let's run a wedge screen. Most of them, like there was that one little dribble handoff that I just mentioned, or he shot the little turnaround over Paul George, but the rest of them, it was the same action every single time

down the floor. You're having you know, your post entry, whether it's KCP or Reggie Jackson come up the left side of the floor and then Yokic is starting at the right elbow, and what he's doing is he's coming off of off like a wedge screen to try to get down to the post right. And I mean essentially the idea there a lot because a lot of teams

run wedge screens for post ups. You're trying to either get the defender and trail position so you can get better post up position, or to force a switch right. And in this particular case, you know PJ. Tucker had had some success on a previous possession like pushing pushing Yokic all the way out to the corner on a post catch, and he ended up taking that crazy one like fadeaway out of the right corner, right, and like,

that's an example of what PJ. Tucker could do. Not that Yokic can't eventually solve that, but why not run a basic action to try to get Jokic into a position where he's catching deeper to the basket or with a better physical matchup against one of the other players on the floor. Right, So after he gets the bucket over pg next possession, they dribble down the left side

of the floor. He comes off of one of those wedge screens down to the block and ends up with a post up on Terrence Man, and PJ Tucker ends up hard doubling Yokic on the face side right. And in this in the sequence, they actually forced Jolkic to miss the shot. He misses like a like a left handed weird push out that barely grazes the front of

the rim. The problem is because PJ Tucker hard doubled James Harden slid over to kind of go over to PJ Tucker's man, and as a result, Aaron Gordon is standing completely unguarded under the rim and he just jumps and grabs it and just kind of puts it right into the basket, right, So like again, you tried single coverage, scored over Paul George, You've now tried a double team, and Aaron Gordon got an easy offensive rebound put back.

Next possession, same thing, same little wedge screen coming off of the right elbow, and Yokic catches on Kawhi Leonard. Kawhi Leonard's posting him up, backs him down, backs him down, spins back over his left shoulder, draws a foul. Okay, So now we're we've gone to the Yokach post up and there's a bucket or a foul on every single possession. Right next one, same thing, straight post up of Paul George on the left bl okay. So Paul George is

the guy that gets switched on to him. After the wedge screen, he kind of spins off towards the baseline and Terrence Mann does a really nice job jumping up and offering help and actually forces Jokic to miss the shot. But again, like Jokic spun off. So he's at the

basket now, and so who's gonna get an offensive? Who's gonna get the rebound when there's you know, three or four Clipper perimeter players and then Nikola Jokic standing there underneath the basket, and he just went up, got his own offensive rebound and put it back into the basket. Next possession, straight post off with Paul George. This was a really interesting play because Norman Powell hard doubles. The Clippers are sick and tired of Yokic picking them apart.

He hard doubles Jokicic just throws the pass right back out to the perimeter, and as the Clippers are rotating back Norman Powell, who offered the hard help, he had to recover to Aaron Gordon under the rim. Terrence Man, who was guarding in the weakside corner, had shown on Aaron Gordon on the double team to take away that pass, but now he was recovering back to the corner and literally casep who Again, this is the continuity factor. He's

seen this exact look a million times. Jokic is there guarded in the post, Norman Powell's in the process of recovering to Aaron Gordon, Terrence Man is in the process of returning to the corner, and there's a little window there as those two guys are moving, and KCP just rifles an overhead pass that hits Aaron Gordon in the perfect spot for him to quick jump up and dunk it into the basket. It was actually an and one, and so now the Nuggets are up by three. Then

we get to the tear the Reggie Jackson drive. So Nikola Jokic is on the right elbow, He's getting ready to come off that wedge screen towards that post upside right. All the Clippers basically have their back turned to Reggie Jackson trying to work on who's gonna end up following Yokic down to the post, Reggie Jackson and against a good perimeter defender in this case, Terrence Man is on the ball and he just hits him with a hard

move to his left hand. And this is something that Reggie Jackson can still do if you give him space, he can beat people off the dribble. And he beats Terrence Man off the dribble, gets all the way to the basket and knocks it down. And then the final one Jokic straight post up of Kawhi. This time Kawhi Leonard's like, okay, Obviously, if I play it from behind, I'm gonna foul him or give up a bucket. So Kawhi fronts the post, gets in front sits low, does

a good job denying that post entry. Paul George offers backside help, and so they throw a pass over the top that Jokic catches up high. PG comes flying in to try to knock it away, and he just feeds it right under the basket to Aaron Gordon because that's Paul George's man. He was bracketing off of Aaron Gordon to help Kawhi fronting the post. It's an easy dunk for Aaron Gordon. So again, like, look at those possessions

that I just laid down. That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven possessions, seven consecutive post ups, and they scored on every single one of them directly as a result of the fact that nobody in the lineup could hang with Nicole Jokic under the rim. And like, now now we're gonna these are the Clippers possessions. I listed them out. Okay, there were a couple of good ones. There's two good

shots that they got. There was a play that James Harden brought Nikole Jokic up to the left of the screen and he ended up hitting Terrence Man on the left block as he was rolling to the basket that engaged the low man. He made the extra pass to Norman Powell in the corner he knocked down a three. There was another so that was a wide open ketch and shoot three for Norman Powell, basically picking the nuggets

apart and pick and roll. Then there was another one where Jokic got onto a switch on Harden and Harden beat him to the basket, made a nice move and actually got all the way there. He just smoked the layup, So I would call that a high percentage shot even though it was a miss. So those were the two good shots that the Clippers got, Okay, these were the

shots that the other shots that the Clippers got. A Kawhi contested pull up three, Paul George missed drifting catch and shoot long jump shot that was contested by Contavious Calboll Pope. Paul George missed impossible pull up three shot clock violation. Paul George missed impossible pull up three. Paul George draws a foul on a pull up jump shot.

That was the one on the left wing where he just kind of like went into his heavy and just got bumped, so he got two free throws there, and then Kawhi missed a really tough left shoulder fade over Aaron Gordon, and then Paul George missed another impossible pull up three and at the end of that run it was one oh nine to one oh four with thirty two seconds left. So we started with the Clippers up

by seven and we ended with them down by five. Now, you might tell me make or miss league, Jason, but really, out of what I just listed what's gonna happen, If you play that game ten times, you'd be lucky if one out of those ten times Paul George makes the same impossible pull up theirs and we seen him do it.

He did it against the Lakers enforced overtime. Like, Paul George can get hot and make shots, but if you're banking on you winning games by knocking down difficult, contested pull up jump shots, while the other team is banking on winning games by force feeding an incredibly high percentage play around the basket, Like they scored seven consecutive times. If you do that ten times, they're scoring at least.

If you play that same game ten times, they're they're scoring at least five out of the seven about every time, about every one of those ten games, Like there's no version of that where like you hold the Nuggets to go oh for seven, not with those lineups, not with those personnel mismatches, not with Nikolea Jokic on the floor.

And so again, like that, that to me is why it's so important when you're watching film and when we're evaluating these teams to separate process from results, because when you get into a seven game series, you got to do it four times. You gotta do it four times in two weeks. And so like if we saw a Clippers Nuggets matchup in the playoffs, like if that's the way that that one team is approaching the offensive end and then the other team is just getting these easy

bread and butter plays like they're just gonna win. I don't know what else I'll tell you Now. From one O nine, one oh four, it got a little weird. Reggie Jackson missed both of his free throws, and then Kawhi got that weird call on the miss dunk, and then Jokic turned it over against the Clippers backcourt pressure, and so as a result, Paul George got a chance to tie the game with a pull up three, but he ended up shooting it into the side of the rim and it got wedged in there between that and

the backboard. As the Nuggets got away from the win. So got away with the win, I should say, but I thought it was really interesting because you know, this is a consistent thing that I've seen around the league in general with general managers, you know, and we saw this with the Nets, Like we're getting Katie Kyrie and James Harden. We got the Sons, We're getting Kevin Durant,

Devin Booker and Bradley Beal. We got the Clippers, We're getting Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, and James Harden with Russell Westbrook right, like this idea of we're just going to put together all of these pull up shooters and we're just going to be so hard to guard because of all of our pull up shooting game that we have. And really, pull up shooting, I've always said, is a ceiling razor. It's a thing that pushes your team over the top. It should never be your bread and butter.

There's one player that I can remember in NBA history who like pull up shooting was kind of their bread and butter and was the and it's steph with the Warriors. But even then it's like, like not really though, because he works off ball so much, and like the step off ball actions produced so much reverse gravity away from the rim that like there's all this high percentage stuff happening around the rim. And again, like what did I say were the high percentage plays for the Clippers down

the stretch? It was the James Harden pick and rolls. Now the Clippers did the Nuggets did end up eventually slowing that action down by one the switch by getting Yokics onto James Harden, they could have offered better help and gotten away with it in all likelihood. Then there

was another play. It was actually the same possession before the Jokic switch, where Reggie Jackson just did an incredible job navigating the screen as Jokicic was in a deeper drop and it actually kept the pocket pass from happening in they kind of shut the action down, and that's when they Terrence Man ended up popping to the three point line, which ended up causing the switch as Reggie

Jackson recovered out to Terrence Mann instead of Harden. But again, like in general, like that sort of action, when you're just getting the defense into rotation and playing basketball out of that. Even that is a higher percentage play than just consistently taking tough pull up jump shots. It's just nobody that can make him at a high enough rate. Again, Steph Can He's about one point two points per pull

up jump shot. He's the one guy that like if he you know, we saw him do it against the Celtics, Like, Okay, you're gonna run your drop coverage. I'm just gonna pick you guys apart by hitting these over the top jump shots. But even then I would argue, it's not their bread and butter. There's so much more that comes from that offense, and so like this is this is the issue. Like you, it is better to be effective than pretty. You know, when Paul George is hitting those crazy pull up jump shots,

it's god damn, it's impressive. Like it. It's like Paul George, his fluidity in his jump shooting is just so impressive. And that's why so many young basketball players are such big Paul George fans, including myself. But at the end of the day, like those ugly ass Jokic post ups, at the end of that game that almost always were you know, misshot offensive rebound, a little bobbled here, Aaron Gordon not quite dunking it, kind of barely getting it over the front of the rim. Like it doesn't matter.

They scored every possession. I mean, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but I think it was fifteen points and seven possessions because it was all buckets on all of them, and then the and one on the Aaron Gordon play. That's fifteen points and seven possessions. Like, that's really reliable basketball. Now. A couple things on the Clipper side, there was some upside, right, like the I think you saw some of the potential

of that group offensively. But like I said, one of the downsides of the James Harden trade is you sent out all your forwards, all of them literally, and you brought back a forward that was shorter than all the forwards you sent out, and you sent out your one really athletic young forward, right, you sent out one of your best perimeter defenders and Nick Batoom. So like in that situation, you've created other physical mismatches elsewhere on the floor.

I think Daniel Tice will help. He's a perfectly fine backup center option. But in order for me to like truly get behind the Clippers as a potential contender, I would need to see the offense kind of develop into a more consistent version of what we saw last night. And then I really think they need an upgrade in the forward spot, like just another body out there so that when they go small, they're bigger than they looked

last night. Like when it's Terrence Man and Norman Powell and James Harden all on the floor without a center, that's a really small basketball team, and you're gonna have a really really hard time winning games, especially in the later phases of the playoffs with that. On the Nuggets front, I thought that was because I thought the Nuggets played like shit in a lot of ways in this game.

They really got baited by the Clippers switching into some poor isolation decisions a lot of guys, you know, And again, this is what switching does, right, Like switching negates screening actions. That's what it does. Like if you run a pick and roll, you run it so that you can get downhill because the guy's going to chase over the top of the screen. If he doesn't chase over the top

of the screen, it's just a switch. Now we're kind of back where we started, except for now I have to beat a different player off the dribble, right, and it can be effective in stagnating teams. And I think I think the Nuggets always knew in the back of their head they'd be able to do what they did down the stretch, which is go to Jokic. But for a large portion of the game, it's like, here's Aaron Gordon trying to isolate Kawhi Leonard and he gets ripped.

You know, there was a lot of kind of like freelance basketball taking place, in large part because the Clippers were baiting them into it in a lot of different ways. But I put down in my notes, Jokic is the best break glass in case of emergency option in the NBA, which I mean, he's the best player in the NBA, so it doesn't really matter what the little individual categories are, but it just that's what that kind of felt like

to me. It felt like, ah shit, the Clippers are up seven on us, Like, let's just go to Jokic every time and we'll get a win. Like that. I also wanted to shout out Reggie Jackson. He's at seventeen points per game on fifty three percent from the field and thirty nine percent from three over his last three games, twelve assists and three turnovers, doing a really nice job filling in for Jamal Murray with his current hamstring issue.

And again, I think it's an example how easy it is to play with Nicole Jokich, Like this is a good NBA guard. Reggie Jackson's a good player. Is he good enough to start for a really good team? Probably not, But is he good enough to fill in for Jamal Murray in a system like this where they need good guard play next to Jokic. Absolutely, And I think he's done a really nice job. I thought he had some

key defensive moments in this game. I mentioned to you guys the like Harden ran the pick and roll and got an easy shot out of it. It was like the one easy shot they got right and then on the very next possession, Reggie Jackson just is like not enough of this and fought over the top of the screen,

stay attached and basically shut the action down. And so I think that's been a really nice you know, we talk a lot about the Nuggets bench not being very good, but they do have some individual good players, and the

bench lineups have really struggled. But as individual bench players have stepped in and played core important minutes with the as they've played core important minutes with Jokic in the starters, they've been able to kind of fill in and be a reasonable facsimile of what the other guys do, right.

I also wanted to I saw a kind of a similar type of dynamic taking place with Jalen Pickett, where and then again he got put into a tough spot too with the Clippers switching, where he had to take a couple of tough pull up jump shots pull up threes off the dribble that he probably otherwise wouldn't take.

He actually did make one of them. But I actually thought he did a nice job in general in the Yokic actions of like understanding how to catch and move without the basketball and to throw those post entries when they're there, and to not get carried away with looking for your own shot. I thought he did a decent job. And he's a guy that kind of has like a stocky low center of gravity who can have some success

defensively as well. I thought it was an impressive win for Nugget for the Nuggets, because again, when you play like shit and you win, especially when you've got guys out of the lineup, that's always encouraging. All right, let's

move on to Pacers Sixers. The Tyrese Haliburton show, the way the way that he picks part the Sixers defense, and this game was super impressive because like, there's three layers to the pick and roll attack, right, Like there's the on ball layer, there's the roll man layer, and then there's the weak side layer, right, and you have to be a legitimate threat at all three layers in

order to make yourself difficult to guard there. And Tyree's just kind of slowly built this fear in the Sixers defense that manifested in a shit show of a defensive quarter for the Sixers in the fourth quarter, and I wanted to kind of break that down. So it started with pull up shooting, right, So Tyrese makes like four pull up threes in the first half, and by the way, he's up to twenty five for sixty two on pull

up threes this season. That's forty point three percent. And that essentially put the sixers in the position where now they're starting to come consistently come out to the level of the screen, and it just in general, they're overreacting to Tyrese Haliburton on ball reps. Right then he started burning them on the weak side by hitting cutters coming out of that week side corner. Obi Toppin in perticular, I had a bunch of these in this particular game.

We're gonna talk about Obi Toppin later, But like, one of the big things that's made him a seamless fit with this with this Pacers team is that he just is a very good cutter and he's been one of the best cutters in the NBA to start the season this year. So, like, if you're burning a team at the point of attack by hitting pull up jump shots, which is pulling the rollman, the screen defender out, and you're also burning the lowman because when the lowman comes

over to tag the roller, that's where the cutters open. Right. If you're consistently burning that with cutting out of the weak side corner, that can open up some things where the rollman has some space, right because if you're taking away the on ball guy in the lowman's hesitant to help.

There's opportunity in there for the lowman. And what was interesting is like, like Miles Turner was in foul trouble all night and had fifteen points in the fourth quarter of this game because he was just getting all the space in the world to kind of navigate and operate in that short roll area. And again, like it was such a it was so funny because in the fourth quarter it was like a total show because the Sixers

just had no idea what to do. On the possessions where they didn't tag the roller, Miles Turner would get a bucket. There was a possession where they tagged the roller and Tyres Alliburton just throws a lob and Obie Topping comes flying in from the weak side just ah, you know, dunk's on Tyre's Maxi's had and screams and yells, and then it's like final Embiid kind of runs a more traditional drop coverage and and Tyris Halliburton just hits like this amazing right handed scoop shot off the glass.

There was another possession late where Embiid kind of like did his quick show but then quickly recovered back to Miles Turner. And Halliburton just bam, hits a left hand step back dribble onto the left wing and knocks down another pull up three point shot. They just had literally nothing they could do with him. They he absolutely and utterly picked them apart. And again, guys, this is an elite defensive team in the Philadelphia seventy six ers. No

one was safe. Now again we'll talk about I'm not gonna talk too much about the Sixers today because I want this to be more of a PACER's focus. But like Tyros, Maxy did not have a good defensive game.

And he's still a young defensive players, super active and is always playing hard and has good quickness, but he just his defensive instincts and anticipation are just a little bit off, and he was responsible for a few of those early tyres Haliburton pull up threes, and obviously at at the point of attack, he couldn't hold his own in the fourth quarter and was in trail position too

frequently and not applying good back pressure. Like obviously Tyris Maxy is a weak point there, but the rest of the lineup that you have out there is good defensive players, and he was just completely picking them apart. Tyre's has been Tyrese Haliburton, I should say, has been the best pick and roll player in the league by a mile. To start this year, He's run two hundred and eighteen pick and rolls that have led to two hundred and

eighty three points. That's one point three zero points per possession. That is preposterous. There are thirty players in the NBA to run at least one hundred pick and roll so far this year, and Tyrese is comfortably ahead of the field. He's at one point three. Luka Doncic is in second place at one point one point one. We're not talking about a small gap here, that's a seventeen percent gap. He is seventeen percent better than the second best pick

and roll ball handler in the league. And so again, like we talked about that that dynamic of the three different levels of pick and roll shot creation, right shot making at the point of attack area, the rollman, the weak side, and obviously passing is the connective tissue that puts all those three together. Passing from the ball handler to the rollman, er to the weakside corner, passing from

the rollman to the weak side corner. You know, like that that is all connective tissue there, but Tyres in particular puts it all together because he is great in all three areas. So we talked about the pull up shooting. Obviously, forty percent on pull up threes for the season, a Ty Halliburton pull up jump shot is worth one point two to two points per possession. That's insane. So that

we talked about like that. We talked about this with the with the Nuggets, but the idea of what's untenable for a defense to allow, Like you want to know why the Nuggets were just letting Paul George and Kawhi work one on one and take tough pull up jump shots because they'll probably make half of them and they're mostly two's, So that's a point per possession. That's a totally acceptable, you know, arrangement for a defense. And in all likelihood they're probably only going to make forty to

forty five percent of them. And now you're down at you know, nine tenths of a point per possession. Right, you have to be able to cause such you know, destruction to a defense that it's untenable for them to continue. And when you're getting one point two to two points per pull up jump shot. That is a real easy way to have opposing coaches like, hey, we got to show high on this guy, like we can't, we can't, we can't give him the shot. If he does, he's

literally going to kill us. And that's literally what happened in the first quarter when he sat there and made the shot time and time again. Right then he's got this deadly floater in the mid range. He's thirteen for twenty three on floaters this year. That's fifty six percent or one point one to three points per shot. That's really good. And then he's sixty six percent in the restricted area on two point three makes per game, which

is not amazing, but it's solid. It's perfectly fine. I would even argue it's a little above average for an NBA guard. And we talked about that little scoop finish that he had over Embiid because, like, Tyreese is not an elite athlete, but he's got good size and I

think he has elite start stop quickness. I think he can get to his spots in large part because of his ability to go from like those hesitation moves to good quick, explosive dribbles that first step to get to where he wants to go, and then he has all the shot making stuff from there, but then you have to be able to make the reads and like, you know, it's funny, I hate you know, there's there's a certain amount of play there's like two different kinds of like

good playmakers in the NBA. In my opinion, there's like the Jason Tatum Yannis class where it's like, I'd even throw Kawhi Leonard in there in terms of relative to what he used to be, where it's like this guy's starting to kind of figure out how to make teams pay for throwing the kitchen sink at him, and and he, you know, he's averaging six or seven assists a game or whatever. You know, Like Kawhi like went from a guy who just was just a flat out terrible playmaker too,

like now he's good at it. Like he's not great, but he's good. He's fine. He's average, flightly above average type of playmaker. Right. There's always like a chasm though between those guys and like the really good playmakers at the top of the league. And I've always thrown in Nikole Jokich, Luka, Doncic Lebron James in this group. Chris Paul is in this group when he was in his prime and he could score the ball more. Tyres Max He's in this group, and this is like, it's almost

just like a natural thing. I'm gonna get I'm gonna get really nerdy here for a second. I'm a diehard Star Wars fan, But in the Star Wars universe, there is this concept of like force sensitivity, Right, So like the Jedi would like find all the young kids in the galaxy that had a connection to the Force, and they bring them to the temple and they train them. Right. That's kind of like the way I view high high level playmaking in the NBA. It's like you either have

it or you don't. It's not something that can be taught. It's not something that even like looks the same for every player. There are just some guys in the league that have a natural affinity for making lightning quick decisions and that can quickly interpret everything that's happening on the floor and it comes natural to them. It's not like a, oh, you know, I got to the point where I could

kind of make some reads. It's like they relentlessly make the reads and it's just it's like hardwired into their system. And I think I think we can pretty safely say at this point that Tyrese Maxi is one of those guys. And like there is a skill element. I want to

be clear. There's a we talk about energy transfer for jump shooting, right, like transferring energy from the from your feet through your handle all the way through the jump shot, right or that that like kind of that fluidity, right, that fluidity between transferring from your handle into a jump shot. The same thing applies to passing, Like you need to

be able to make a retreat dribble. But like let's just say you make a right handed through the legs cross over to your left hand in a retreat dribble because you see a you know, pressure in your face and you need to quickly throw a left handed skip pass across the court. Like I think young players in general need to practice this. I saw a video of of Jalen hood Chafino for the Lakers, who's trying to come back from a of a knee injury, I believe, and he was doing a drill with the Lakers staff

where he was working on movement shooting. But what they did to kind of get it started, is they had him take a retreat dribble and pick and roll and throw a left handed skip pass. They just made him throw a left handed skip pass to start every rep and then he like ran into the block and then cut through to the weakside corner and one of the coaches hit him for a catch and shoot jump shot

in the in the in the right corner. What I liked about that is, like that's an example of like layering stuff in a drill to make sure you get reps, because it's hard to just be like, hey, we're gonna practice left hand passing today, but if you mix it in with stuff, it can matter. But again, like there is a skill element, like Tyers Maxi is one of the best left handed passers in the NBA. It's a

vitally important skill. Again, like specifically that left hand because most pull up jump shooters that are righties are most comfortable shooting pull up jump shots when the ball's in their left hand. They want to drive left, hit that high hesitation, and then rise into a jump shot. And the main reason for that is their left foot is back,

so the right foot's forward. It's natural footwork for a right handed player, when you're coming towards your right, as a right handed player, you have to swing that right foot around, which adds like an additional kind of physical exertion element to the shot, which just makes it harder. Right. You know, we all remember the video that was going around a while back with Cam Johnson and JJ Reddicks talking about right handed shooters going to the right, they

have to square up in mid air. It's more challenging. Right. So pull up shooting is a vital part of pick and roll, and most right handed players are better pull up shooting and going to their left, then the ball is going to be in your left hand, and if you're going to make passing reads out of that, you're probably going to need to be able to make passes with your left hand. And so I wish it was a more a consistent thing that we saw in player development

among the younger, younger players. But like even if we assigned that as a skill, which again like Tyres Maxy

has those Tyre's Halliburton has those skills down. He's got the handle, he's got the fluidity connecting the handle to his passing and to his shooting and all those different things it's also just a natural ability, like the dude just sees every There was a play in the fourth quarter of this game where he hit I think it was Obie Toppin, but I'm not certain, but it was on the right wing and it was a broken play and he lost control of the the ball and he

was facing away from the basket, and he gained control and turned and identified a cutter out of the weak side corner, out of the right corner, all in an instant, and like through a perfect little leading pass that just hit the dude in stride as he was going to the basket. And I'm like, this is just lightning quick instincts from this kid. Like it was a broken play. It wasn't even like, oh, a textbook pick and roll.

Low Man read like it was a broken play where he just saw something break open, and he just doesn't miss these opportunities. He sees everything before it happens. I've been so incredibly impressed, and I had a ton of fun today diving into the Tyres Haliburton film as I keep trying to say Tyre's MAXI thanks to that Sixers game, Obi top and he had twenty seven in this game.

He's averaging a career high eleven points per game and a career best sixty nine percent through shooting percentage, despite the fact that he can't really shoot right and still isn't particularly I think he's at right around thirty percent from three this year. So how is he having more offensive offensive success than he used to have in this system than he did in other systems. He's doing two

things extremely well. The Pacers have done a really nice job of just focusing him in focusing him at what he's good at right, and that's moving without the basketball cutting like if you see the low man go over instead of just waiting for a corner three cut. And like we've seen this with Aaron Gordon with the Nuggets. You can be a good spacer as long as you

catch and dunk everything under the basket quickly. And that's kind of what It looks a little different because he doesn't have the matchup attacking piece that Aaron Gordon has, But it's similar to Air Gordon in the sense that, like the with the inverted spacing, with Miles Turner doing so much drible handles and drible handoff stuff around the three point line and popping to the three point line

so much. He's got kind of that whole baseline to work with, and Tyrese is just super good at finding him. He's a big target, similar to Aaron Gordon in the sense that it's like, just throw it somewhere up there and he's gonna get it, like the Donkey had at the end of the game, that backside lob like it was. He's so high above the rim. It's just a massive target that you're throwing. Yet, he has scored seventeen baskets on cuts this year, that is the seventh most in

the NBA. And then the second piece of it is just running his lane in transition. This is a team that pushes the ball a lot, and they've got guards that are willing to push the ball ahead. He's got twenty mad transition baskets, which is the twelfth most in the NBA. Defensively, is still a mixed bag. He's so top heavy that he's kind of easy to knock off his center of gravity. You saw Tobias Harris have some success against him last night doing that. But he's found

a role here he's and he's excelling in it. And I'm happy for Robi toppin. Miles Turner. We talked about the stuff he did on the roll. I won't get into that again, but just quick hands, quick decisions and finishing and making free throws. That helped too, because he drew a couple of fouls down there, but he also got a couple of key stops on Joel Embiid just by keeping his body in front. He's one of the guys too that's like big enough to kind of hold

his own down there a little bit. He had a playing pick and roll where he beat Embiid to his role spot and took a charge. There's another play where and Be tried to kind of force a quick iso on him and he had em Beats so flummixed that he ended up shooting behind his head and he got a miss, and then Embiider was frustrated, and then Embiid actually did meet him to the middle, and because he's frustrated, instead of just dunking the basketball, he tried to like

pulverize the rim and ended up missing a dunk. Shout out to Miles Turner. I thought he had a big game. It's so hard to uh, it's so hard to play well when you're in foul trouble because it disrupts your rhythm and when you do get into the game at the end, it's like you feel like you're not even a part of the basketball game at that point. Yet

he kind of stayed resilient through all that. Bruce Brown, he's been getting his face just, you know, literally burned off by Tyrese Maxey over the course of the weekend. Right gave him fifty the last time they played, but finally got some stops down the stretch of this game, some big stops on Tyrese Maxi had a big, a semi transition layup where kind of similar to what he did to D'Angelo Russell in the Nuggets series last year.

Were coming up the left wing. The Bigs are back in transition, but they're up at the level because they're getting ready for whatever Tyre's Halliburton is gonna do. So there's kind of like this open space on the back side of the play and he just goes right hard to the rim on Tyrese Maxi and gets a layup. I thought he played really well. I thought he's been a really nice fit for them. In the big picture. They're currently seven and four. They have the seventh best

record in the NBA. They finally have some signature wins. I didn't have them on my power rankings yesterday because they had just one win against a team that is currently below five hundred. In fact, their first five wins were all against teams that are currently below five hundred. But since then they beat the Bucks and the Sixers all be at the Bucks without Dame. They have the best offense in the league one hundred and twenty two points per one hundred possessions. They are a terrible defense,

so they're twenty eighth in defense. The biggest issue on defense right now is they can't protect the paint. They're the only team in the NBA currently giving up over sixty points per one hundred possessions in the paint. They're also twenty fourth in defensive rebounding, and the rebounding's tough because they are a small team and that's just gonna

be kind of the reality of their predicament. But I do think they can be better than they have been Defensively, they don't force enough turnovers for being as athletic as they are, and just in general, I think they're capable of being a more aggressive perimeter defense, forcing turnovers and getting out in transition, and I think that'll be the obviously the biggest thing that prevents them from being as

good as they're capable of beating. Then, my biggest question with this team right now is where does Ben Mathern fit into this picture. He only played sixteen minutes all night last night. They closed with Buddy Heald in his spot. His scoring efficiency and usage are all down this year, and so I'm just I'm really interested to see whether or not he's going to get enough opportunity to continue his development here if he's gonna end up getting squeezed as a result of that Ben, as a result of

that Bruce Brown signing. All right, let's move on to fake questions, real answers. Jason, are the Golden State Warriors in trouble? No? What did I tell you guys when the Lakers got off to a bad start, I said, when it comes to good teams, you know, you don't just rip off wins against good teams like it doesn't happen, like it's You're not going to see a team go on an eight game winning streak where they beat eight

playoff teams like that doesn't happen in the NBA. The tea the league is too deep, Like the Boston Celtics have been incredible and have been so dominant, and they went to Minnesota and lost, and they went to Philly and lost, because sometimes when you play great teams, you lose. And by the way, the Celtics have I think last time I checked, they've won seven games against teams that are above five hundred. So the Celtics have beaten a lot of good teams. But you don't beat the good

teams every time. You're gonna drop some games against good teams, right, So, generally speaking, the good times in the NBA regular season for good teams where they rack up wins are usually you're healthy and you're playing a weaker stretch of your schedule. Like the Lakers, they've won three in a row. Now

they're six and five and things are just kind of better. Right, Well, they're healthy now, Ads back from his injury, Ruby Hachimuraz back from his injury, and they played three opponents and the Suns, the Blazers and the sons of Blazers and

the Grizzlies that are combined nine and twenty two. So again like that that's when they will go on a win streak, right, And that's the thing with the NBA is like then you're gonna have these downstretches where it's like we're playing some tough opponents and guys are hurt, and like all of a sudden, it's like, oh shit, we lost two or three games in a row, or we lost four games in five tries. That's what happened

to the Warriors. Like Steph is hurt, Steph got hurt, and you're playing a really tough stretcher your schedule and now you're dropping games, right, Like you had a bad matchups, Like we talked about the Warriors' toughest matchup for them is elite rim protection teams that have good perimeter defenders that can UH, that can kind of pressure the ball and force them to back cut into their UH into their rim protection. Right, that's the type of team that

causes the Warriors problems. They lost to two of them over the weekend, and then they dropped a game where their best player was out, So like, does that to me reflect the big picture of Golden State? No, Like we talked about, if they're gonna beat those sorts of teams, they need more scoring punch, right, Like they're gonna need Clay and Chris and Andrew Wiggins to get back to form. Right. But at the same time, you know, Andrew Wiggins is

playing really poorly. I don't think that's gonna continue throughout the season. Like there's they have they have ways to fix that within the within this locker room, within the scope of this current regular season. Right. But this is what the bad times look like. Injuries, tough schedule, they lost some games. It happens. What did I expect from

the Warriors this season? If you guys remember in the season preview what I said I viewed the Chris Paul trade as a playoff ceiling razer, but that within the scope of the regular season, I still thought they would struggle some and that they'd be kind of in the middle of the pack. Kind of seems like where we're headed. But like, I'm not ready to write off the Warriors over the streak. They're one of only six teams in the NBA right now with a winning record over five

hundred of better teams. They've won four games like that this year against five hundred of better teams. They have quality wins. The Steph injury is not serious. He's gonna be back. Talk about Draymond in a minute. He's gonna be suspended probably, but he's gonna be back. Like the Warriors are not done. This is just what the downtimes look like. And just in general, as an NBA you know, fan base, we all need to do a better job of like kind of understanding that within the eighty two

there are gonna be highs and lows. There's no steady ascent into greatness. Like even let's look back at the year that they won the title. They start fIF teen in one in large part because they're healthy and there was some easy games on the schedule, right, They get off to a great start for the first what two thirds of the season, and Steph gets hurt, and then they starts dropping games and it's like the sky is falling, and then everyone gets healthy in time for the playoffs

and they win the title. So again, like just in general, we need to these little three, four, five game windows where teams don't play well. We need to do a better job of compartmentalizing and not overreacting to these ten to fifteen game stretches where a team looks somewhat mediocre, but key players are out of the lineup. Like all that tells me is, yeah, if that key player misses the playoffs, then yeah, they might not be able to

win a series, you know what I mean. But I just I think that's so interesting because like my next question is, Jason, have the Lakers finally figured things out? And I mean, this is what the good times look like. Easy schedule, guys, healthy, You're gonna rack up some wins if you're a good team, right, And there are some

encouraging signs right there. Shooters are making shots finally, Like I talked a lot going into the going into the winning streak about how what's so bizarre about this Laker team is Dangel Russell historically good shooter, not making shots, Austin Reeves historically good shooter, not making shots. Gabe Vincent historically good shooter, not making shots. Torrian Prince historically good shooter,

not making shots. Like all those guys were shooting horribly compared to their career averages, right, And like what you've seen over this recent winning streak is those guys have started to make shots. And that's good, that's positive regression, that's a good sign right a lot of better offensive process as well. I think that has led to that, but we're not going to get into that today. Anthony Davis appears to be over his hip issue, like he was moving great last night. That's good. Help is on

the way. Jared Vanderbilt is gonna come and help it with a lot of their perimeter defense issues. And then I want to shout out D'Angel russelly a big game. I think he hit six threes last night. I think he's in a tough spot in a lot of ways. Because I've said this on the show, some Laker fans disagree with me, but I think that D'Angelo Russell getting traded is one of the safest bets of this NBA season.

He like plays the exact same position as Austin Reeves and does all the exact same things for all for like, you know, their delos a little bit better as a passer. Austin's a little bit better as a scorer in my opinion, especially within the playoff context. But like they're more or less the same player, and they're both limited athletes, so they can't play together, and that just kind of inherently

makes it so that if you have. If you're serious about winning a title this year, you're gonna just in terms of resource allocation, you're better off turning de Los salary into a great perimeter defender that could play next to Austin, right. I think you've seen that in crunch time. They've consistently gone down with Austin in crunch time instead of De Lo. But despite that, he's just been such a professional. He's been a leader to the young players

on the team. He's had a really good attitude when he's been benched, He's cheered the team on, even did that during the Nuggets series last year. He just has been a force of positive energy. And like he's in a situation where like he might play amazing the rest of the year and he might stay with the Lakers. I don't think that's gonna happen, but that's certainly an outcome that's on the table. But like, that's what's crazy, is like he's in a situation where he could play

amazing until February and they still trade him. Like that's the predicament that he's in, and he's just handling it like a professional. And that's the thing. Like, I think a lot of times we talk about guys as basketball players and we forget to talk about them as humans, and like, to me, Dangel Russell has some limitations as a playoff player. It might end up causing him, in my opinion, will end up causing him to be in

a different jersey come February. But the dude is just a professional, and he is a great dude and is doing a great job maintaining the chemistry situation within that Lakers locker room in a way that he could have gone a different direction if you wanted to write. All right, Last question, Jason, you've consistently defended Draymond as different than Dylan Brooks because he doesn't cross the line into trying to hurt people. What do you have to say after

the choking incident last night? Like I said, I thought this was legitimately hilarious because I just it was just funny that I went out on a limb and then this happened. Do I think it's the same as, you know, trying to close line a guy who's going up for a dunk and breaking his elbow. No? Do I think is it's the same as deliberately rolling up on someone's knees and trying to break their ankle or whatever the hell Dylan Brooks was doing. No, it's not the same

as that, but it was bad. I can defend him for taking go bet off of Clay, but like it's one of those things where like if you were watching the clip, you can kind of it's like I can defend this, I can defend Oh, Okay, now I definitely can't defend this, because it was like he didn't just put him in a headlock. He locked it in and then held on for a long time, and like then after that held on for longer. And so here's the thing.

It was clearly out of line. I think he's probably gonna get a pretty significant suspension and he's gonna deserve it. And unfortunately doing like making that decision and putting your team in a predicament where they're in a losing streak and they need their players available. I think it was

a mistake. But at the same time, like, obviously I don't think that's the same as that's classic Draymond doing too much, but it's not the same as it's not the same as as like actually trying to hurt people. Unless you think Draymond was trying to kill Gobert, which obviously is just super dramatic. Rudy made some comments after the game that were dramatic in that regard. Obviously, Draymond's not trying to hurt anybody, he just was. He just crossed the line and did something that's going to get

him into a suspension situation. And like I said, when it happens, I will agree with the suspension because I mean, here's the thing. Clay and Jada McDaniel started to fight, and Rudy Gobert pulled Clay off, and like, what was interesting about it was Rudy kind of had a similar type of thing going on, but then he didn't lock in, Like he pulled Clay off and his hands were near

the neck, but he didn't lock in. Draymond like did the same thing to start, and then he locked in, and like from there, it's like that's just completely indefensible. So whatever happens, will it will. We'll be deserved at that point. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. Is always I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. We will be back with more instant reactions and deep dives tomorrow the volume